A Newsstand Bailout
By Dylan Matthews - Jan 29th, 2009 at 2:19 pmIt looks like Out of Town News, the iconic newsstand in the middle of Harvard Square that’s been operating since the mid-1950s, might not close after all:
Retail store operator Muckey’s Corp., which runs newsstands in the Boston area under Patriot News Inc., signed a five-year lease Monday to take over Out of Town News. It will remain a newsstand, per the signed contract, but also because Muckey’s wanted to maintain the tradition.
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The decades-old newsstand, which sells domestic and international publications, was rumored to be closing this month, after its former operator, Hudson News of East Rutherford, N.J., did not renew its lease with the City of Cambridge, citing diminished demand for print news. The lease was to expire Saturday.
I feel bad being this cynical about something with the history and symbolism of Out of Town News, not least when I pass by it on a daily basis, but I really don’t see how Muckey’s does any better with the space than Hudson did. It has the advantage of a repaired crosswalk–whose construction period no doubt hurt sales over the last year–but its business model is no less flawed.
What distinguishes Out of Town News from traditional newsstands is, well, its out of town news. In addition to the New York Times and Newsweek and the like, it regularly stocks international publications like Le Monde and Der Spiegel. This made sense at the stand’s founding, and gave it a near monopoly on this market in the Boston area. But when you can read Ha’aretz or the Times of India online for free, there’s little reason to shell out for the imported physical version. Indeed, in the semester I’ve been at Harvard, I’ve only ever bought a Coke at Out of Town News–not even a magazine to go with it, just a Coke. The plural of anecdote isn’t data, of course, but what data there is spurred Hudson to abandon its lease.
So I hope Out of Town News stays in business, I really do. It’s a funky building, and it’s got a lot of history behind it. But unless Muckey’s has some brilliant marketing strategy that eluded Hudson, I suspect we’re going to be in this same situation in five or ten years.
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